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History 741

Historiography

Fall Term 2020 Thursdays 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. Virtual

Dr. Michael Gauvreau

Office Hours: By appointment. I can be contacted by email, Skype, or Webex [email protected]

Objectives:

History 741 is devoted to an examination of the theories, methods, and history of historical writing, and focuses primarily on the post-1870 period. The chief objectives of the course are: • To provide students with an overview of the history of history, with emphasis on the chief developments of the twentieth century • To introduce students to the most important schools of historical writing of the twentieth century • To introduce students to some of the most important issues, debates, and innovations in modern historiography • To stimulate students to think about their own historical concepts and methodology, both in terms of the theoretical and the practical.

Key Changes for 2020:

This course is being offered in virtual (also known as synchronous) format. This means that we will meet according to the schedule set out in your timetables. Seminars will meet weekly using Webex, which will be made accessible via email invitation. All students must have access to a Webex account prior to joining the course.

Evaluation and Grade Distribution:

This course is a seminar, which places a premium on informed participation in discussion. This requires that students read and reflect on the relevant material in advance, attend class meetings, and engage in the discussion regarding the readings, issues, and themes of the course. In view of the fact that most M.A. students are engaged in major writing projects and other duties for other graduate courses, the Department has chosen not to include a major research assignment in History 741 (except for Ph.D. students doing the course as a minor field). The course, however, does require the submission of written 2

work, and for both M.A. and Ph.D. students, there is a final examination. Evaluation of student performance in the course consists of the following elements:

M.A. students Ph.D. students Seminar Participation: 35% 25% (Weekly (Weekly Contribution (10%) Weekly Commentaries (10%) Seminar Presentation (5%) Short Discussion paper (10%) contribution, 10%, commentaries 5%, seminar presentation 5%, discussion paper 5%

Major Essay 30% 10% (due Dec. 3, 2020)

Major Essay: 30% (due Dec. 22, 2018)

Final Examination: 35% 35% (Dec. 17, 2020)

Seminar Participation: In addition to regular oral participation, both M.A. and Ph.D. students are responsible for leading one seminar discussion during the term, with the exception of the “Public and Private” week (Nov. 19) which will be a general class discussion. The week following your seminar presentation, you will be required to submit a 1000-word (4-5 pages) discussion of the readings. These papers are not intended to be descriptive “reports,” rather, students should aim to elucidate the central themes, questions and debates that emerge from the readings. Assignments must be submitted electronically, and it is advisable that you keep a hard copy of all your written work. It is also your personal responsibility to ensure that your computer technology (including email programs) are in proper working order. In addition, in order to assist on-line discussion, you will be required to submit, on a weekly basis, a 500-word commentary on the weekly readings. Again, these are not 3

intended to be recapitulations of the contents of the readings, but rather, critical reflections based on a selection of what you think are significant themes and problems raised by the readings that you can bring to class and raise questions. These are due each week before class.

Major Essay: Each student will be responsible for writing a critical assessment analyzing the literature on the discussion for “private and public” (Nov. 13). Your analysis should not be a simple recapitulation of the contents, but should aim to critically examine the concept as advanced by Jürgen Habermas and how historians have both applied and critiqued the relationship of the public sphere, the nature of the “private” sphere, and the emergence of modernity. The results of this critical assessment will be presented in essay form, of 2500-3000 words (12-15 pages max.) The due date for this essay is Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020.

Major Essay (Ph.D.): For those Ph.D. students taking History 741 as a minor field, a major historiographic paper of 5-6000 words (25-30 pages max.) is required. Topics and bibliography should be worked out in consultation with the instructor. (Due Friday, Dec. 22, 2020)

Final Examination: Both M.A. and Ph.D. students will write a 3-hour, take-home final examination scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020.

Formalities:

Students are strongly advised to retain a xerox copy of any written work submitted for a part of their mark. Assignments can be submitted electronically, with the proviso that it is highly advisable that you retain a hard copy of all written work.

Note: there is a penalty of 5% per day (including weekends) assessed on all late essays.

Attendance at seminar is mandatory. A student who misses a session through uncontrollable circumstances should see me in order to discuss the means by which to make it up through written work.

Academic Dishonesty: Academic dishonesty consists of misrepresenting by deception or by other fraudulent means and can result in serious consequences, e.g. the grade of zero on an assignment, loss of credit with a notation on the transcript (notation reads: “Grade of F assigned for academic dishonesty”), and/or suspension or expulsion from the university. Graduate students are expected to know what constitutes plagiarism, and are not given any leniency on a first offense.

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It is your responsibility to understand what constitutes academic dishonesty. For information on the various kinds of academic dishonesty please refer to the Academic Integrity Policy, located at http://www.mcmaster.ca/academicintegrity/

The following are examples of three forms of academic dishonesty:

1. Plagiarism, e.g. the submission of work that is not one’s own or for which other credit has been obtained.

2. Copying or using unauthorized aids in tests or examinations.

3. Submitting work, or major parts of work, that has been submitted for credit in another course.

Faculty of Humanities Policy on Student Email communications with Instructors:

"It is the policy of the Faculty of Humanities that all email communication sent from students to instructors (including TAs), and from students to staff, must originate from the student's own McMaster University email account. This policy protects confidentiality and confirms the identity of the student. Instructors will delete emails that do not originate from a McMaster email account."

Faculty of Humanities Statement on Changes to Course Outline:

“The instructor and university reserve the right to modify elements of the course during the term. The university may change the dates and deadlines for any or all courses in extreme circumstances. If either type of modification becomes necessary, reasonable notice and communication with the students will be given with explanation and the opportunity to comment on changes. It is the responsibility of the student to check their McMaster email and course websites weekly during the term and to note any changes.”

Course Texts:

Anna Green and Kathleen Troup, eds., The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory. New York: New York University Press, 1999.

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Edward Said, Orientalism

Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Basic Books, 1984.

Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere

History 741 Coursepack

Seminar Readings:

Sept. 17: Introductory

Sept. 24: Empiricism, Historicism, and the Rise of “Scientific” History

Green & Troup, pp. 1-32. Georg G. Iggers, “The Emergence of History as a Professional Discipline” (CP) Frederick C. Beiser, “Ranke’s Romantic Philosophy”, in Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition (e-book) Mark Salber Phillips, Society and Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740-1820, 3-30, 103-28. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream, Introduction, chapter 1. (e-book)

MF: Michael Bentley, Modernizing England’s Past: English Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870-1970.

Oct. 1: Marxist Historians

Green & Troup, 33-58. Richard Johnson, “Edward Thompson, Eugene Genovese, and Socialist Humanist History,” History Workshop Journal, 6 (1978), 79-100. (JSTOR) Keith McClelland, “Some comments on ‘Edward Thompson, Eugene Genovese, and Socialist-Humanist History’,” History Workshop Journal, 7 (1979), 101-15. (JSTOR) 6

David Eastwood, “History, Politics and Reputation: E.P. Thompson Reconsidered,” History, 85:280 (2000), 634-54. (e-resources) William H. Sewell Jr., “How Classes Are Made: Critical Reflections on E.P. Thompson’s Theory of Working-class Formation”, in Harvey J. Kaye and Keith McClelland, eds., E.P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives, 50-77 (CP) S.H. Rigby, “Marxist Historiography”, in Michael Bentley, ed., Companion to Historiography, 889-928. (CP) Rochona Majumdar, “Thinking Through Transition: Marxist Historiography in India”, in Q. Edward Wang and Georg G. Iggers, Marxist Historiographies: A Global Perspective, 193-218. (CP)

MF: Matt Perry, Marxism and History

Oct. 8: The Annales and Historical Sociology

Green & Troup, 87-140. Fernand Braudel, “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II – Extract from the Preface,” in Fernand Braudel, On History (CP) Fernand Braudel, “History and the Social Sciences: the Longue Durée,” in Braudel, On History, 25-54. (CP) François Furet, “Beyond the Annales,” Journal of Modern History, 53:3 (1983), 389-410. (JSTOR) Lynn Hunt, “French History in the Last Twenty Years: The Rise and Fall of the Annales Paradigm,” Journal of Contemporary History, 212 (1986), 209-24. (e-journals) Peter Burke, “The Annales in Global Context,” International Review of Social History, 35:3 (1990), 421-32. (JSTOR) Natalie Z. Davis, “Women and the World of the Annales”, History Workshop Journal, 33 (spring 1992), 121-37 (JSTOR) Jonathan Dewald, “Lost Worlds: French Historians and the Construction of Modernity”, French History, 14:4 (2000), 424-442 (e-resource) Bonnie G. Smith, The Gender of Historical Practice, 185-242 (e-book)

MF: André Burguière, The Annales School: An Intellectual History

Oct. 15: Fall Reading Break

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Oct. 22: The Postmodern Project and the “Linguistic Turn”

Green & Troup, 204-29. Jean-François Lyotard, “The Postmodern Condition,” in Keith Jenkins, ed., The Postmodern History Reader, 36-38. (CP) Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” in Hayden White, ed., Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 81-100. (CP) Frank Ankersmit, “Historiography and post-modernism,” History and Theory, 28 (1989), 137-53. (JSTOR) David Harlan, “Intellectual History and the Return of Literature,” American Historical Review, 94:3 (1989), 581-609. (JSTOR) John E. Toews, “Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn,” American Historical Review, 92:4 (1987), 879-907. (JSTOR) Bryan Palmer, “Critical Theory, Historical Materialism, and the Ostensible End of Marxism: the Poverty of Theory Revisited,” in Jenkins, The Postmodern History Reader, 103-114. (CP) Peter Burke, “Metahistory: Before and After”, Rethinking History, 17:4 (2013), 437-447 (e-journals)

MF: Wulf Kansteiner, “Hayden White’s Critique of the Writing of History,” History and Theory, 32:3 (1993), 273-95. (JSTOR) David Carr, “Narrative and the Real World: An Argument for Continuity,” History and Theory, 25:2 (1986), 117-32. (JSTOR) Andrew Norman, “Telling it Like it Was: Historical Narratives on their Own Terms,” History and Theory, 30:2 (1991), 119-35. (JSTOR)

Oct. 29: The Foucault Effect

Michel Foucault, “Nietzche, Genealogy, History,” in Michel Foucault, Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, 369-91. (CP) “On Power,” in Laurence D. Kritzman, ed., Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984, 96-109. (CP) Roger Chartier, “The Chimera of the Origin: The Archaeology of Knowledge, Cultural History, and the French Revolution,” in Roger Chartier, On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language, and Practices, 51-71. (CP) Paul Veyne, Foucault: His Thought, His Character, 92-110 (CP) Peter Ghosh, “Citizen or Subject: Michel Foucault in the History of Ideas,” History of European Ideas, 24:2 (1998), 113-59. (e-journals) 8

Carolyn J. Dean, “The Productive Hypothesis: Foucault, Gender, and the History of Sexuality,” History and Theory, 33:3 (1994), 271-296. (e-journals)

MF: Bruce Curtis, “Foucault on Governmentality and Population: the Impossible Discovery,” Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 27:4 (2002), 505-33. (JSTOR) David M. Halperin, “Forgetting Foucault: Acts, Identities, and the History of Sexuality,” Representations, 63 (1998), 93-120 (JSTOR)

Nov. 5: Anthropology and Ethnohistory

Green & Troup, 172-203. Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, 3-104. Harold Mah, “Suppressing the Text: the Metaphysics of Ethnographic History in Darnton’s Great Cat Massacre,” History Workshop Journal, 31 (1991), 1-20 (JSTOR) Roger Chartier, “Texts, Symbols, and Frenchness,” Journal of Modern History, 57:4 (1985), 682-95. (JSTOR)

MF: Peter Burke, Varieties of Cultural History

Nov. 12: Women’s History and Gender History

Green & Troup, 252-76. Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review, 91:5 (1986), 1053-1075. (JSTOR) Gisela Bock, “Women’s History and Gender History: Aspects of an International Debate,” Gender & History, 1:1 (1989), 7-30. (e-journals) John Tosh, “Hegemonic Masculinity and the History of Gender”, in Stefan Dudink et al, eds., Masculinities in Politics and War, 41-58 (CP) Nancy F. Partner, “No Sex, No Gender,” in Brian Fay et al, eds., History and Theory: Contemporary Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 268-96. (CP) 9

Alexandra Shephard, “Manhood, Patriarchy and Gender in Early Modern History”, in Amy E. Leonard and Karen L. Nelson, eds., Masculinities, Childhood, and Violence, 77- 96 (e-book) Joan Hoff, “Gender as a Postmodern Category of Paralysis”, Women’s History Review 3:2 (1994), 149-168 (e-resource) AHR Forum, “Revisiting ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis”, American Historical Review, 113:5 (Dec. 2008), 1345-1429 (JSTOR)

MF: Novick, That Noble Dream, chapters 15 & 16.

Nov. 19: Private and Public – The Career of a Concept

Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1-140 (skim) Lawrence E. Klein, “Gender and the Public/Private Distinction in the Eighteenth Century”, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29:1 (fall 1995), 97-109. (JSTOR) Harold Mah, “Phantasies of the Public Sphere: Rethinking the Habermas of Historians”, Journal of Modern History, 72:1 (Mar. 2000), 153-82 (JSTOR) Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy”, in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere, 109-142. Geoff Eley, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century”, in Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere, 289-339. Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England”, Journal of British Studies, 45:2 (2006), 270-92 (JSTOR) Sara Maza, “Women, the Bourgeoisie and the Public Sphere: Response to Daniel Gordon and David Bell”, French Historical Studies, 17:4 (autumn 1992), 935-50 and response by David Bell, 954-56 (JSTOR)

MF: Keith Michael Baker, “Defining the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century France: Variations on a Theme by Habermas”, in Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere, 181-211 William Reddy, “Sentimentalism and Its Erasure: The Role of Emotions in the Era of the French Revolution”, Journal of Modern History, 72:1 (Mar. 2000), 109-52 (JSTOR)

Nov. 26: Postcolonial Perspectives Green & Troup, 277-96. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), preface, 1-110, 329-52. John M. Mackenzie, “Edward Said and the Historians,” in Patrick Williams, Edward Said, Vol. 3 (London: Sage, 2001), 127-143. (CP) 10

Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (London: Routledge, 1990), 157-75. (CP) Daniel K. Richter, “Whose Indian History?,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 50:2 (1993), 379-93. (JSTOR) Gyan Prakash, “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 32 (1990), 383-408. (JSTOR) Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, pp. 3-46 (e-book)

MF: Rosalind O’Hanlon and David Washbrook, “After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism and Politics in the Third World,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), 141- 67. (JSTOR) Gyan Prakash, “Can the ‘Subaltern’ Ride?: A Reply to O’Hanlon and Washbrook,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), 168-84. (JSTOR)

Dec. 3: New Approaches I - Is There a History of the Emotions?

Ute Frevert, “Defining Emotions: Concepts and Debates over Three Centuries”, in Frevert, Emotional Lexicons (e-book) Nicole Eustace, “Emotion and Political Change”, in Susan Matt and Peter Stearns, eds., Doing Emotions History, 163-83 (CP) Martin Francis, “Tears, Tantrums, and Bared Teeth: The Emotional Economy of Three Conservative Prime Ministers, 1951-1964”, Journal of British Studies, 41:3 (2002), 354- 87 (JSTOR) Jan Plamper, “The History of the History of Emotions”, in Plamper, The History of Emotions: An Introduction, 40-74 (CP) Barbara Rosenwein, “Review Essay: Worrying About Emotions in History”, American Historical Review, 107:3 (June 2002), 821-845. (JSTOR) “AHR Conversation: The Historical Study of Emotions”, American Historical Review, 117:5 (2012), 1487-1531

Ph.D.

Nicole Eustace, Passion is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution.

Major Essays Due!!

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Dec. 10: The End of Social History? - New Approaches II - The Microhistorical Turn Major Essays Due!!!!!

John Brewer, “Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday Life”, Cultural and Social History, 7:1 (2010), 87-109. (e-resource) Miguel A. Cabrera, “Linguistic approach or return to subjectivism: IN search of an alternative to social history”, Social History, 24:1 (Jan. 1999), 74-89. (e-resource) Sigurdur Gylfi Magnusson, “The Singularization of History: Social History and Microhistory within the Postmodern State of Knowledge”, Journal of Social History (spring 2003), 701-35. (e-resource) Carlo Ginzburg, “Microhistory - Two or Three Things that I Know About It”, Critical Inquiry, 20:1 (autumn 1993), 10-35. Carlo Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm”, in Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, 96-125 (CP)

MF: Carolyn Steedman, An Everyday Life of the English Working Class: Work, Self, and Sociability in the Early Nineteenth Century (e-book)